


i hear the secrets that you keep (when you’re talking in your sleep)

by oephelia



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Sleep Deprivation, and can you really fix-it fic something that hasn't been released yet, can you slow burn in seven thousand words, soft assholery and general tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 09:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19315072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oephelia/pseuds/oephelia
Summary: Billy’s there the way that he’s a lot of places nowadays, sort of absent-mindedly, like he’s not sure how it happened or why and is going somewhere else in his mind anyway.Steve watches him more than ever now, and Billy rarely watches back.(or five times billy really needed some sleep, and one time he needed something else entirely)





	i hear the secrets that you keep (when you’re talking in your sleep)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harringroveheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harringroveheart/gifts).



> a birthday gift for caddie, who deserves the whole world. i don't have that sort of power so here is a very small, very fragile world, a very small, very fragile friendship, and the promise of more, eventually.

v.

It’s the last Saturday of November, ’85, and they’ve survived the summer — mostly, somehow, a fistful of parentheticals to say that it was messy and nightmarish, lit up fairground neon and then washed out clinical white, and now it’s over and there are still six bright kids-almost-too-old-to-be-kids, two exhausted older siblings, one Steve and one Billy. And really, the mostly, the somehow, the almost, the maybe are all Billy.

Billy was the monster, black-veined and wild-eyed, and then he wasn’t.

The air had been hot and sticky, the thing in Billy was roaring, Max was screaming, face screwed up and red and teary, and suddenly the Billy-thing’s fingers were digging deep into its own forearms, it was folding up at the middle, eyes sightless blue. Steve’s hands on the bat were so slippery.

He could swing. It would be just like that night at the Byers’, Billy already halfway to gone and the bat coming down, dizzy-quick, thud, and if he looked away maybe he wouldn’t dream about it.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said, sick with it, “I’m so fucking sorry, jesus,” and the bat was lifting and when Billy looked at him, his mouth was still screaming and screaming but his eyes were very blank.

“Steve, _don’t_ ,” from Max, and this wordless, hurt noise as Billy fell, and Steve thinking, just for a second, that he’d already done it, that he’d done _that_ , until Billy’s whole body had snapped back, splayed out, spine arching from the ground, hands white-knuckling the dirt, and this thick sticky-black not quite liquid, not quite smoke had started coming, too too fast, from his howling mouth, so much that he was choking on it. 

They’d watched him thrash, _felt_ it every time his head lifted then slammed back against the ground, and the stuff had poured out of him, and the weird, sticky black tendrils crawling through his arms had pulsed under his skin, pressed up until it looked like his veins would rupture. It was impossibly long, and impossibly horrible, and Max’s arms were tight around Steve, hiccuping with helpless hurt into his side, and then there was a hoarse, clotted burst of black, and Billy was still.

Steve had half-carried, half-dragged his limp, sticky, rotten-smelling body back through what was left of the fairground, the bloated, pallid tents and the smell of hot frying oil, and Max’d held tight to his wrist as they drove to the hospital, and, later, when a sleepy-eyed, heavy-handed Hopper found him in the waiting room, there were no words left. 

He should have been dead, probably, hollowed out and worn through, but he wasn’t.

And now they’re doing a sort of second Thanksgiving at the Byers’, and Billy’s there the way that he’s a lot of places nowadays, sort of absent-mindedly, like he’s not sure how it happened or why and is going somewhere else in his mind anyway.

Steve watches him more than ever now, and Billy rarely watches back.

So he watches when Billy comes in, a few steps after Max, carrying a green bean casserole that must be Mrs. Hargrove’s handiwork, and he watches when Billy lets Joyce lead him into the kitchen like he doesn’t know the way, and he can’t hear what either of them are saying, but Joyce looks like she has no idea what to do with Billy now, or what to make of him.

He watches when Billy excuses himself to the bathroom, while the kids mill with almost aggressive cheer in the living room, and he doesn’t count the minutes but he can feel Billy not being there and not being there and not being there until he comes back. He watches him hang back in the hallway, looking sort of small in that worn leather jacket, like he doesn’t always have the energy to square his shoulders and fill it out anymore. Watches him hover, like he thinks maybe he can get back to his car without anyone noticing, and then their eyes catch. He doesn’t know what his say, but Billy doesn’t leave.

He watches, when Joyce hands Billy a plate, and Billy sits, waits for Hopper to take a bite and then eats methodically, greens, potatoes, then turkey, wipes the plate clean with a bread roll, doesn’t speak or look up and doesn’t reach for anything he hasn’t been served.

He watches Billy take his plate to the sink while everybody else eats seconds and thirds, watches him run the water until it’s hot enough that his fingers come away a sore-looking red. He pours dish soap into a rag, cleans the plate, turns it round and round in his hands long after it’s spotless, like he’s lost track, maybe like he’s listening to the conversation going on around him and not paying attention to his hands, maybe like he just isn’t quite here right now. Joyce comes up behind him, reaches round him to turn the water off, and Billy startles, drops the plate into the sink with a clatter. 

He watches Billy leave, go out onto the front porch, close the door behind him.

The kids are all knobbly knees and elbows on the living room floor, Monopoly board between them, Will quietly counting out notes, Mike and Lucas squabbling over the race car piece. 

He follows.

Billy’s on the porch bench, and he’s taking up space like he’s been waiting for the chance, legs wide, slumped low, head tipped back against the wall. It’s half-dark, mid-afternoon November gray, and this is Billy’s second Indiana winter, but he still acts like he can’t feel the chill.

“Fuck off,” Billy says, eyes closed, or half-closed.

“Yeah, alright,” Steve says, and sits down anyway. Knocks his knee against Billy’s and, when Billy doesn’t move, leaves it there. “Dustin’s mom made pie.”

Billy shrugs.

“Your loss, I guess. How’re you at Monopoly?”

Another shrug.

“All the best ones are taken anyway.” Steve tucks his hands under his armpits, thumbs hooked. “No one wants to be the _boot_ , or the _iron_ , or whatever.”

He’s talking for the sake of talking, and Billy’s eyes are still behind their lids, and the jut of their knees is solid, sharp-ish between them.

“Or the cup one. You know?”

Billy snorts. “The thimble?”

“What?”

“It’s not a cup, it’s a — are you serious?”

“What’s a fucking _thimble_?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Billy says, with feeling. 

Steve smiles, because Billy’s eyes are still closed and he’ll never know.

“No one wants to be the _thimble_ , then.”

They’re quiet for a second, two, three. Steve considers.

“Why would I _know_ that? Why would anyone _know_ that?”

Billy breathes hard through his nose, like a laugh with not enough life to it, or like a sigh with too much.

“Shut up, Harrington,” he says.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and doesn’t do that either. He thinks, maybe, possibly, he’s figuring out what Billy needs. “You know, they’ve probably finished off the pie by now. They’re like those _fish_ , the ones with all the teeth, they just come out of nowhere and you blink, and everything’s gone. There was that movie with, uh, Heather whatever —”

“Piranhas,” Billy says, slow.

“Yeah, I guess.” A nudge, Billy’s knee pushing Steve’s. “Anyway, that shit’s scarier than _Jaws_.”

A pause. Water and blood and hungry toothy things are maybe dangerous territory, but Billy isn’t moving, isn’t even looking, is loose-shouldered and smooth-browed and his eyes are still, still closed.

Steve thinks about telling him that they rented _Jaws_ in middle school, that Carol refused to swim in the lake for the next three summers in a row, like that’ll take them somewhere kiddish and funny, but the last few years have done nothing but prove Carol’s point. People get swallowed up, here, and if they never reappear then they’re probably the lucky ones. Better to be chewed up and gone than spat back out, _knowing_.

So he changes direction.

“Hey,” he says, “looks like it might snow tonight.”

It does, heavy steel-gray clouds gathering thick and the air starting to smell clearer. Billy shrugs.

“Probably be another rough winter,” he says. “I’ve seen, like, five spiders this week, and there’s this web on the kitchen window that’s like, bigger than my head. It’s meant to be a sign? They’re getting ready for a bad one, or something.”

“Hick,” Billy says, with no bite at all, and then he’s yawning, like a cat, small at first like he’s trying to hold his jaw tight, and then suddenly wide and pink and toothy. So big it’s like it doubles itself, a yawn that bubbles into another. 

“Probably, but like. It works. My grandpa, my mom’s dad? He used to know all this shit, said he could predict a hard winter from just spiders and crickets and mice. Or like, the ways that ants moved.”

“Huh.”

“I guess his dad, or his dad’s dad, was an actual farmer? There was something about corn too, like, if the corn husks were too thick, that was another sign.”

Steve doesn’t know how thick a corn husk is meant to be, or what exactly a corn husk is, but beside him, Billy’s breathing real even and quiet, and his hands are loose in his lap. Steve untucks his own, breathes into them.

“You should probably get winter tyres, just in case,” he says. “It’s not so bad on the main roads, but no one ever bothers to salt down here, Mirkwood, or, uh, whatever this one’s actually called, or the road up to Hopper’s place.” 

He’s never consciously played the ‘let’s pretend’ game before, has never tried so obviously, so clumsily hard to speak without saying anything, but it’s working, because Billy’s mouth has gone slack and when Steve pulls his leg away, Billy’s fall further apart. He’s gone so soft with sleepiness, and Steve feels — something. 

“Ice and potholes can be a _bitch_ on your suspension,” he says, real quietly.

Inside, Joyce finds him a blanket, thick and plaid and smelling a little like citrus, a little like smoke, very very faintly of mothballs, and Billy sighs a little when Steve drops it in his lap, makes this sticky, curious sound on the exhale. 

Steve thinks tucking it around him would be more than either of them can stomach, would maybe push a toe over the line that he’s never acknowledged but seems closer than it ever did when Billy was just Max’s shithead older (step-)brother. He leaves it alone, even though his fingers itch.

iv.

Steve’s grandpa was wrong, or Steve had just misunderstood how _many_ spiders constituted more spiders than normal — November ends with a whimper, and no snow, December begins wet and slushy, roads rimed with grimy yellow-gray, and it’s all very toothless. Shaping up to be the bland sort of winter that never gets past being too cold to be comfortable but too warm to be festive.

Which maybe means it’s not _actually_ cold enough for Steve to slow when he sees Billy, shoulders hunched and jacket done up at least part-way, walking in a direction Steve knows won’t take him home. It’s none of his business, and Billy can look after himself, will survive most anything, cockroach-like, Steve thinks, and it would be much easier just to blare the horn and drive on by.

He slows anyway, rolls his window down, leans out.

“Looking for trouble?” he calls to Billy’s back, and Billy turns, lazy, walks backwards so Steve has to keep the car at a crawl.

“Seems like trouble was looking for me,” Billy says, like he _knows_ , and Steve thinks it would only be _fair_ if Billy tripped and fell on his ass, but he doesn’t.

“Yeah, whatever,” Steve says, the easiest option, always. “It’s like, ten degrees, and almost dark, where’re you going?”

Billy shrugs. 

His nose is reddish, his cheeks and the tips of his ears so bright that Steve clicks his tongue against his teeth, says, “Then why don’t you decide _inside_ the car,” and reaches across to open the door.

There’s a second where Billy, leaning back on his heels, looks like he’s considering taking off, so Steve lays on the horn obnoxiously, says, “C’mon, I’m letting the _cold_ in,” and Billy commits, drops into the passenger seat, pulls the door closed with a noise that makes Steve wince. 

“You’re letting the heat _out_ ,” he says, without looking over.

“What?”

“It gets colder because you’re letting the heat _out_ , not letting cold in, that’s how, like, convection or whatever works. Hot goes to cold, so —”

“I’m pretty sure cold air _exists_ , and it just got _into_ my car,” Steve says, playing up to it, and pulls away from the curb. 

“ _Jesus_ ,” Billy says, again, and this time Steve doesn’t smile because Billy is looking at him, sort of curious, sort of irritated, forehead creased and eyes narrow.

He turns the radio on instead, tuned to the local news station, volume set low so it’s hard to make out words in the low murmur of sound. Billy looks away again, eventually, kicks his feet out, slumps in his seat.

“Is this how you live, Harrington,” he says, when they’ve been on the road for a few minutes, and Steve isn’t sure whether he means the radio — which is absolutely how he lives, struggles to tolerate music when he’s alone, when he’s driving, prefers white noise, it’s a thing — or Steve’s driving, more cautious than it used to be now that he knows things have a habit of appearing on back-roads, from the shadows, out of nowhere, or just a general unease about Steve’s existence, which is understandable. Steve feels it too, most days.

He digs in his back pocket, pulls out a mostly squished packet of cinnamon gum, passes it to Billy.

“Take one, and shut up,” he says. “The only words I want coming out of your mouth are directions to wherever it is you want to go. Or, like, thank you.”

Billy raises his eyebrows, Steve knows it, can feel it even though he’s keeping his eyes fixed on the road, then there’s the rustle of paper as he unwraps a stick. The wet, too-loud sound of chewing. A crack as he snaps it.

Steve rolls his eyes.

But Billy doesn’t speak, just slouches like a sullen kid, and snaps his gum occasionally into the comfortable almost-silence like a reminder that he’s being _good_ but he’s not happy about it. And he doesn’t say anything when Steve, coming up on the intersection that would take them towards Loch Nora and then on into the little network of residential streets, Cherry, Elm, Maple, takes a left instead, drives them into a loop. Doesn’t offer up an alternative, either. 

So Steve drives, and thinks about the weather and the leftover lasagne waiting in his fridge and the haircut he needs to get before his parents come home for Christmas, and doesn’t think, even a little, about why he’s willing to waste so much of his time driving Billy in circles when he hadn’t even really needed to stop for him in the first place.

It takes maybe ten minutes without a single snap for Steve to look over and realise that Billy has fallen asleep. 

Again. 

Gone drowsy-soft and splayed open in the passenger seat of Steve’s car, and now that he’s looking there’s this shine of damp at the corner of Billy’s mouth that has to be drool, and he’s making that noise, that sort of wet-mouthed sigh. Steve wonders whether he’ll choke on his gum.

He could reach over and shake Billy awake, ask for somewhere to drop him off so he can get some actual rest in an actual bed, but — but — Billy hadn’t been walking towards his house, hadn’t been going in remotely the right direction, and Steve _knows_ how it feels to be worn thin with tiredness and still not be able to sleep in your own bed, and like. It would be the kind thing, to let him sleep for just a little while longer. Kind things don’t usually announce themselves so clearly, or make themselves so easy to choose, but here one is, and Steve would like, this time at least, to be uncomplicatedly kind.

It’s just that he’d like to be uncomplicatedly kind without having to acknowledge it to anyone except himself, without Billy having to know about it at all, and definitely without having to fight about it if Billy wakes up defensive and unpredictable.

He drives back downtown, to the general store, parks real careful and shuts his door real soft, then walks around the block a couple times, watches a few minutes of the six o’clock news on the TV in the Radio Shack window display, goes into Melvald’s and spends too long browsing the three varieties of toilet roll on offer. Buys more gum, and then, to round things out and make it worth a paper bag, some laundry detergent, a carton of orange juice and a dozen eggs he’ll never use. Is pathetically grateful that Joyce isn’t on shift to look at him and see _everything_.

He feels like an idiot, but an idiot who isn’t going to get caught out being nice to Billy Hargrove. 

When he gets back to the car, he closes the door sharp behind him, and Billy startles awake. Holds up the paper bag when Billy looks, blearily, over at him.

“Had a couple errands to run,” he says. “Where to now?”

And Billy’s expression is, for a second, entirely blank, like he’s putting pieces together and hasn’t quite decided what he’s seeing, before he clears the sleep from his throat, says, “Take me home, Harrington.”

iii.

He doesn’t see Billy that week, even in the places he expects to, and the image of him, a little sleep-rumpled, a lot resigned, walking back to his squat little house, pausing at the door like maybe he was going to look back, sticks uncomfortably in Steve’s head. It’s easy now, after the monster, to read sadness onto Billy, sadness that Steve can’t be sure is actually there, a sadness that could just be the bleeding of something in Steve out, over, through — but sometimes, he _wonders_.

Saturday night, he’s doing his wondering in the car, instead of at home sitting in front of the television or lying awake in his too-plaid boyhood room, and he sees Billy’s Camaro parked outside the diner, and it’s like a relief, or a whole new question. 

He doesn’t hesitate.

Slips into Billy’s booth without asking, kicks his feet up on the vinyl, says, “You already ordered?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Billy says, flattens his hand over where his necklace hangs, like he’s clutching his pearls, and Steve snorts, just so Billy _knows_ he didn’t miss it. “What the fuck?”

He looks, Steve thinks, like he’s been deflating for a while, and it’s starting to show around his mouth and eyes, like his whole face is a little smaller, or held tighter in itself, and there are these creases from movements it doesn’t quite make anymore.

Guesses it’s been a while since Billy last slept: it’s a face he’s spent two years coming to learn in the mirror.

“Thought you could use some company,” he says, hopes it doesn’t sound like _I could use some company_. 

Billy’s hand hasn’t dropped, is holding onto the pendant now, thumb and index finger rubbing sort of absent-mindedly, and Steve’s never looked close enough to see what’s so important that it can’t be taken off, even to shower, but he wonders, now, whether there’s anything left to see, or whether it’s been rubbed into indistinctness. 

“Is that a, uh, what’s it called, a rosary?” 

“Seriously?”

“I don’t know, man, _is_ it?”

“ _No_ ,” and Billy sounds a little snappish, a little condescension-syrupy, but Steve thinks he might be catching on, or starting to, because he says, “rosaries are the beads, you’re meant to, I don’t know, count out your prayers on them, or your Hail Marys, or whatever. Not my scene.”

“Okay, so what is it then?” Steve says.

“None of your fucking business is what,” Billy says, letting go of it, fisting his hand under his cheek to prop his head up, and that’s a few tumbling steps in the right direction.

“Yeah, alright,” Steve says. “ _Have_ you ordered?”

“No,” gesturing at the empty counter, the absence of a waitress, or more widely, at something Steve clearly isn’t grasping, “I was _waiting_ —”

“Fine,” Steve untangles his legs, slides out of the booth. “You want a drink, something to eat?”

Billy’s nose wrinkles, says, “Whatever,” like the concept of wanting something, or maybe, more specifically, the concept of telling Steve that he wants something, is horrifying. 

Steve shrugs.

“Back in a sec, then,” he says, and Billy blinks back at him, but stays put, head looking real heavy on his hand.

Lionel Richie is playing in the back, and someone’s singing along, a little thready but sweet, _say you, say me, say it for always, that’s the way it should be_ , water running, footsteps, dish-ware clinking together. Steve leans on the counter, laminate a little sticky under his elbows, and clears his throat. Waits a second, then reaches out, knocks a metal napkin-dispenser onto the floor with a clatter.

The waitress appears from the back, drying blue-veined hands in her apron, bright red lipstick bleeding into the lines around her mouth, looks deeply, exhaustedly unimpressed when Steve says, “Oops.” 

“We close in twenty,” she says, and Steve smiles, lays it on thick. Looks down for her name tag. Stutters over it a little when he sees _Barbara_.

“Then we’ll eat fast, Barb.”

She closes her eyes, shakes her head a little, but he knows she’ll melt, and after a moment she does, with his smile, or his nerve, or the desire to make him go away. “What can I get you?” 

“Just a Coke,” he says, and she points a thumb behind him, at Billy. 

“And for him?”

Steve thinks about the first weeks of summer, of watching Billy sink can after can of Pepsi from the lifeguard’s chair.

“He’ll get a Coke too,” a second’s thought, “and a slice of whatever pie you’ve got.”

“You want glasses for those?”

And Steve thinks he’s probably made enough of a nuisance of himself for the night, shakes his head, and thanks her, gives her triple the total for a tip, hoping she’ll smile at him, but she just sighs, clicks her tongue. “I’ll be right over with the pie.”

The bottles sweat condensation into his palms, so cold it almost stings, and he thinks about pressing one to the back of Billy’s neck just to see him startle. And then he sees Billy, and knows he wouldn’t, because Billy looks so _tired_ , so heavy and dull-eyed.

Suddenly, in fact, the whole Coke thing feels less funny.

But Billy doesn’t mention it when Steve pushes his across the table, just pops the cap off, takes the straw Steve offers. Drinks like he doesn’t notice, or care. There’s something very precise about it, neck of the bottle curled between two fingers and thumb, tongue looking for the straw then pulling it into his mouth, eyes down so his lashes look weirdly long, or dark, or thick, or just very _there_ , brushing his cheeks.

Steve blinks. Runs his tongue over his teeth in a sort of weird sympathy.

“We can’t stick around long,” he says, after a moment. “She’s closing up.”

Billy spits out the straw, says, “And then what? Back to the old homestead, Harrington?”

“I guess,” Steve shrugs. “Not much else to do.” 

Which isn’t necessarily true, but he thinks telling Billy how sleepless his nights are, how far he’ll drive to shake off the feeling of his house and the lonely, sickly dreams he dreams there, would be a little on the nose, would be an honesty inviting honesty, and he can’t trust _this_ Billy not to spill open on the coffee-ringed diner table between them. Can’t trust himself? Isn’t sure.

“Fucking podunk town,” Billy agrees.

Barbara appears behind him, puts the plate of pie down heavy, like an exclamation point, _language_ , but this time when Steve meets her eyes, she does smile. Says, “Eat up, then get home to your mamas, it’s _late_ ,” and she’s way off but means so well that it glows.

It’s peach pie, golden on top and hot from the microwave, and Billy looks — well, hungry, mostly, but something else too. 

And Steve has a Coke, but no other reason, really, to sit there and watch Billy, so he starts talking.

“Hey, so I need you to help settle something for me,” he says, as Billy’s fork scrapes the plate. “Me and Nance were having this argument —”

Billy makes a vaguely encouraging noise.

“So Joyce has this thing about _Romancing the Stone_ , thinks Michael Douglas is _dreamy_ and Jonathan’s like, yeah, and Katherine Turner, or whatever —”

“Kathleen,” Billy says, thickly. Steve reaches over to pinch off a piece of crust, and Billy swats him away.

“ _Ouch_ , jesus, yeah, Kathleen Turner, he’s like, she has this _smouldering gaze_ and _husky voice_ and shit going on, and Nancy’s like, I love her in that detective show, you know, the sort of noir-ish one —”

“Huh?”

“Exactly, right? So I asked what she meant? And Jonathan goes, oh you mean _Moonlighting_ , the one with Bruce Willis? And she’s positive that that’s not the one, says that’s, uh, Sybil something and has nothing to do with noir whatever-the-fuck _anyway_ —” 

Billy’s head is back on his hand, gaze slow and heavy, and he’s only halfway through the slice but he’s pushing his fork-full around the plate sort of aimlessly. 

“And then she says the one she’s thinking of has that British guy, the one with the eyebrows, and Joyce is like, oh, _Remington Steele_ , you know? Where she’s a detective with a fake boss, and he’s a thief, but then he takes on the fake boss’ identity so they have to work together, and, I don’t know, they have _chemistry_.”

A hand wave, like that'll clarify things.

Billy blinks at him, and Steve shrugs.

“Podunk town, more free time than anyone knows what to do with, yadda yadda, and, like, it’s a good show —”

Another blink.

“ — an alright show, okay, fine, but the _point_ is Kathleen Turner has never been on it, guaranteed. That’s Stephanie Zimbalist, and she’s like, are you sure? She has that _voice_.”

Billy’s eyes close, and stay closed for too long to pass off as a blink, and when he opens them again it’s like they’re sticky, lids fluttering.

“And Jonathan’s still asking whether we’re sure it’s not _Moonlighting_ , which, I’m pretty sure Kathleen Turner hasn’t even _been_ on TV, although Joyce thinks she may have been on some soap set in a hospital?”

And Billy’s still trying to keep his eyes more open than closed, but he’s dropped the fork entirely, and his cheek looks baby-fat-soft where it’s squished up by his hand.

“So I’m basically one hundred percent that these are three separate people, Kathleen Turner, Sybil Whoever and Stephanie Zimbalist, but Jonathan thinks Nancy’s wrong about Sybil, and Nancy thinks I’m wrong about Stephanie, and like, Joyce is no help because she’s still talking about _Romancing the Stone_ and whether she’ll get a chance to see _Jewel of the Nile_ what with the seasonal rush, blah blah, all the extra shifts she’s working, whatever —”

Billy’s asleep. 

He’s still upright, and a little twitchy, and looks like if Steve breathed too hard he’d probably jerk right back into consciousness, but _asleep_. Steve lets the sentence fade into quiet, pulls over Billy’s half-finished pie, picks it up by the crust and shoves it in his mouth, just to balance things out.

Barbara wipes down every surface in the diner twice, Steve watches her, watches her swap the ketchup and mustard bottles over, and back, and over, smiles at her when she comes to collect the empty plate and takes it into the back to clean, and then again when she comes to take their mostly-empty Coke bottles. Nudges Billy with his foot when she comes back, finally, to say that she really does need to be getting home, and don’t they?

And Billy blinks in double-time, drops his hand to show a pinkish indent where his ring has pressed into his cheek, and nods like he’s been awake the whole time. Says, as they walk out to their cars, “Tell Wheeler Kathleen Turner was in _The Doctors_ ,” like that answers the question, at all, like that was the _point_. He looks at Steve, though, like he knows that it wasn’t.

In his car, adjusting the rear-view, Steve thinks, once is an accident and twice is a coincidence, but three times? Three times is a habit.

ii.

It’s two o’clock on a school night, or two o’clock on a school _day_ , and Steve is lying very still in the dark, and somewhere in his room, exploding the silence, there’s a blare of static. Noise, then quiet, then noise, then someone’s voice, slightly distorted, hissing, “Steve? Are you there, Steve?”

He feels nauseous, palms, ears, cheeks suddenly glowingly hot and throbbing with his heartbeat.

Reaches blindly around under his bed until his hand hits his walkie talkie, says, “Yeah, fuck, I’m here, who is it? What’s happening?”

“—ll, Steve, it’s Will,” comes the slightly garbled response, before it stabilises a little, “I’ve got a message from Max, she’s out of range and can’t use the phone but it’s really important, she radioed Lucas, and he radioed Dustin, and he radioed me —”

Steve can imagine how big and how brown his dumb soft eyes are, and it’s the only thing that stops him wanting to scream.

“— she says something's happened, something really bad, and Billy’s gone, took his car and it’s been hours, she doesn’t think it’s safe.” A beat. “Over,” like a prompt for Steve to say something, say anything.

Fuck.

“Yeah, okay, fuck,” he says, “yeah.”

Kicks over the laundry pile, where, _yes_ , his sneakers are buried, tries to shove his feet into them hands-free without losing his balance.

“Does she know where he could be? Like, _any_ idea? Uh. Over.”

“No, she’s really freaked out, he could be anywhere, over.” 

Because a _yes, Steve, he’s probably at the lake throwing rocks at birds or screaming at pine needles, it’ll be a twenty minute round trip and then you can come right back home_ would be too easy.

“Jesus, fuck, okay,” he says, one arm into his jacket, “I’ll head out, I’m heading out, over.”

“Radio us,” Will says, “if you find him, or. Um. If you don’t?” And the signal is awful, but Steve’s pretty sure at least some of the wobble in Will’s voice is real, real nerves, real fear, real _something_.

“Yeah, of course, yes,” he says, softens it, “I’m sure everything’s okay, probably just. Car trouble, I don’t know, just sit tight and let me know if anything changes. Over.”

A second, then, “Be safe, over.”

Steve’ll _try_.

But once he’s been driving a while, bat knocking between his legs, headlights nudging at the edge of the darkness, he starts to feel a little reckless. 

No Camaro bristling like a bad tooth among Loch Nora’s luxury sedans, no Camaro conspicuously alone in the downtown parking lots or sitting pretty at the side of the road, no Camaro by the lake, or in a field, or at the stupid eerie primary-colour play park.

So Steve swings down the dirt road towards the quarry on the wrong side of fast, jars his teeth over every pothole, and feels the adrenaline, the burst of _panic emergency panic_ that comes with late-night static, the sick-warm-too-much feeling of being depended on. It’s maybe the route, or maybe the feeling, that shakes the memory loose, the bus, the dogs, the _fear_ , but suddenly Steve thinks he knows where Billy is. 

There’s no real turn off for the junkyard, no fence, so he just makes an impulsive right, drives into the grass and keeps driving until the rotted out, skeletal cars, furniture sets, pieces of life debris start to emerge as dark shapes to either side, keeps driving until his headlights hit something that shines back, glossy oil-sheen blue.

Bingo, Steve thinks, and kills the engine.

“Will? I’ve got him, over and out.”

Billy is comma-curled in the back seat of his car, wearing his denim jacket, using his leather one as a blanket, and it’s the stupidest thing Steve has ever seen. There’s a strand of hair sticking to his lower lip and a shadow falling over his eyes and he looks so _cold_ , so _young_ , Steve wants to shake him until he rattles. Maybe touch his hair, too, but only once.

Waits a second, then knocks on the window, a hard _one-two_ rap. 

Billy’s up faster than Steve can drop his hand, jerks upright like someone’s pulling his strings, and Steve can see him make sense of himself, then the car, then Steve’s face in the dark outside. Watches him tighten up around the edges, wipe his mouth to knock the hair away.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says.

“Fuck off,” muffled slightly from inside the car, but heartfelt, Steve thinks.

“Bite me.”

But he moves away from the window to sit on the hood, gives Billy a few minutes, and when the car door closes and Billy comes to sit next to him, he seems more solid, somehow, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Trembling a little, probably with the cold, but then so’s Steve, with the cold and with a bit of whatever comes after adrenaline, and it’ll pass. 

Their shoulders brush.

“If you so much as smudge my finish, Harrington,” Billy says, dutifully, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” leans back a little on his hands so they overlap, his arm behind Billy’s back, closer, closer. “And what?”

Billy shrugs. “Use your imagination.”

He’s wearing both jackets, leather over denim, pats down every pocket he has until he finds his smokes. Pulls one out, then fumbles numb-fingered with his lighter until Steve takes it, lights up for him the way he’s done for countless girls on countless dates, caging him in with one hand and holding the other to the cigarette in his mouth, hot yellow-white flame flickering between them.

“Fuck _off_ ,” Billy says, around it, “quit _mothering_ me,” and Steve thinks, oh. Ouch.

Says, “Asshole.” 

And then, can’t help himself, “Look, when you can’t do something _yourself_ , and someone else does it _for_ you, because they want to _help_ you, because you’re maybe sort of _friends_ , you can just say thank you. It doesn’t even hurt.” 

Billy purses his lips, blows smoke in his face. “What, we’re friends now?”

“I _guess_.”

Steve used to make friends the normal way, by being _Steve Harrington_ and smiling and knowing how to have a good time, but somehow this way, the messy, upside down, terrified- _together_ way, sticks. It’s how he kept Nancy and Jonathan, how they kept each other, it’s how Jane has friends, and her new, weird, lopsided family, it’s what he thinks holds Billy and Max together now and like. That’s something.

“We don’t have to _talk_ ,” he says, when Billy doesn’t say anything, “I’m not going to _ask_ , or whatever. But I have a spare room, with a _bed_ , and _blankets_ , and _central heating_ , so maybe next time —”

And Billy shoulders him, hard enough to startle but not actually very hard at all, says, “Are you _done_?” but under it, maybe, _thank you_.

i.

Next time, as it happens, comes on the twenty-seventh.

Christmas at the Harrington house has been a faint, rushed-over thing since Steve turned seven; his father, business-like, had told him that if he really _wanted_ all the expensive and unnecessary things on his list to Santa, he’d have to accept that Christmas was a time spent in Aspen, with Daddy making important connections and securing investments over the dinner table, could he show them he was a big boy now and be _good_? When Steve turned sixteen, another, more _grown up_ deal was brokered; he’d get cash as a gift, and in exchange he’d stay in Hawkins, his parents would travel back for a three day flying visit, they’d have a strained meal all together on Christmas day, and twenty four hours later they’d be gone again.

It’s a deal he’d fought for, hard, sick of bright white snow and bright white smiles, bright white gift tags that never had a message or kisses or even his name, bright white tablecloths and bright white sheets of impersonal chalet rooms. But it’s been three years and he thinks maybe this is just as miserable. 

(He’d tried to decorate, the first year, but it looked tacked on, childish in a house so coherently and meticulously show-room coordinated, and his mom had sort of sighed, at it, at him, he wasn’t sure, but after that it didn’t feel worth the effort. 

No tree, no lights, just the wreath that hung on the door from October to March, the emptiest, dullest of seasonal gestures.)

So it’s the twenty-seventh, his parents are gone, and _It’s a Wonderful Life_ is on, again, is never off it feels like, and Steve is not eating food straight out of the fridge and not jerking off. Wants to, can’t really think of anything better to do, but feels sort of stale-crusty-gross about it, like maybe that would be _it_ , a glimpse of Christmas future too bleak to stomach.

And then there’s Billy. Storm-cloud heavy, blue-purple-bleeding, caught somewhere between resentful and uncertain, standing on his doorstep, saying, “You said _next time_ —” and not quite meeting his eyes.

Billy’s standing in his too-big house. Billy’s not touching anything but he’s looking at everything, like he’s memorising, or joining dots, the birds on the rug to the birds in the painting, the pile of unopened mail on the sideboard to the dust on the fake, waxy flowers. Billy’s holding himself like Steve did after Billy left a boot-print on his ribs, and there’s blood crusting at his nose and his lip and down his temple. Billy’s not crying, but he might have been, earlier.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Steve says, and Billy’s eyes finally meet his like _say something, dare you_ , like Steve doesn’t know better by now. “Don’t get blood on the carpet.” 

Leads him to the kitchen, where all the surfaces are easy-wipe, and the light is brighter, and there are four chairs for Billy to ignore in favour of sitting on the counter like an asshole, legs wide, feet swinging against the cupboard doors. 

“You mind?” Steve says, from the freezer, unpacking the stacks of Tupperware dinner portions Mrs. Henderson sends him home with to get at the frozen spinach he knows is behind.

“Oh shit, _sorry_ ,” Billy says, sounding anything but. “Should I take my shoes off? Your mom keep a clean house?” 

The bag is frozen mostly solid, too solid to hold comfortably round the curve of a ribcage, so Steve drops it unceremoniously, stomps on it once or twice, and the crunch of it is _visceral_. Billy’s nose wrinkles.

“Like, _unlived-in_ clean,” Steve says, which feels almost funny now that he isn’t alone to think it. Waves the now-limp bag of spinach in Billy’s direction. “Hold this against your ribs.”

“Just a sec,” Billy says and Steve watches, disbelieving, as Billy slides off the counter, toes his boots off without untying the laces and steps out in socked feet. They’re grubby gray against the stark black-white tiling. Watches him nudge his boots together, and out of the way, like maybe he’s used to having to do it. Feels a little hysterical.

Billy, shoeless, gets back on the counter. 

“Better?” he says, and takes the spinach, hikes up his shirt so Steve can see the shiny, pulled-tight swelling around his ribs, the redness. Sucks his breath in through his teeth when the ice touches, and his stomach muscles twitch.

“Better,” Steve says, slow. “You know she’s not, uh, she’s not actually _here_ though. To care.”

Goes to the sink, wets a dishcloth for Billy’s face, thinks once some of the blood’s gone he’ll be able to figure out what comes next. 

A “huh” from beside him. Then, “Is she dead?"

He wrings the cloth out in one violent twist.

“ _Jesus_ , no, she’s not dead,” steps into Billy’s space, a little rough, holds onto his jaw to tip his face up. “She’s in Aspen. Stay still.”

Starts with the side of his face, where, now that he’s close, he can see the skin has split just under his hairline, blood clotting dark, then rustier and flaking down his temple onto his cheek. 

“There’s blood in your fucking _hair_ ,” he says, feels weirdly hushed. 

They’re not going to talk about it, he thinks, watching the brown-red come away on the cloth, prodding gently at the edges of the cut. 

Rinses out the cloth, then comes back, moves down to his nose, the split at the bridge, the bloody snail trails from both nostrils. Swipes a little too hard, a little too fast, over his cupid’s bow, like maybe if he’s careless about it it’ll feel less like it’s his hand rubbing over the shape of Billy’s mouth.

“Be _gentle_ with me,” Billy says, saccharine. 

Hysteria is definitely bubbling in Steve’s throat.

They’re not talking about it. He rinses the cloth again, holds Billy’s chin in one hand, wipes the blood from around his mouth. Gentle, not _too_ gentle. They’re not talking about it.

“What about your dad?” Billy asks, and Steve can feel his lips move. Takes a second to catch up.

“Him too, they’re both in Aspen, they, uh —” the sentence eats itself. He wants to justify being alone, wants to trip over himself to make sense of it, but he’s got nothing. “They did come _back_ for Christmas, they just. Didn’t stick around.”

The bristle of almost-stubble between his fingers, the way the cloth tugs, scratchy, at Billy's skin, the way Billy smells, like blood and sweat but under it, something that smells the way that amber looks, rich and gold and warm.

“Bummer,” Billy says, impassive, and the hysterical feeling finally hiccups out of him, this choked off half-snort, half-laugh.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, pretty much.” Wraps the cloth around his thumb and runs it over the corner of Billy’s mouth, can’t quite stop himself, rubs away the smudges of new blood from where the scabbing has cracked again. “Stop _talking_ , you’re making it worse.”

Steps away to throw the dishcloth in the sink. There’s a box of bandaids in a drawer somewhere, some tweezers and Bactine and maybe some gauze, a half-hearted attempt at a first aid kid, but Billy’s already getting up, free hand ginger at his mouth, tongue prodding at the tenderest point. 

“Better?” Steve asks, wants it to sound like he’s just feeding Billy’s lines back to him, but it comes out hopelessly genuine.

And when Billy looks at him, steady and opened-up, says, “Better,” that feels genuine too.

He sleeps in Steve’s spare room, in Steve’s spare clothes. In the morning he’s gone, no note, but the clothes are folded, real neat, and the bed’s made with hospital corners, and Steve can’t, won’t, _shouldn’t_ put a name to what it makes him feel.

o.

Except that he thinks, maybe he’s inched over the line, somehow, somewhere, between Billy in his car and Billy in his house and Billy in his brain.

(Because) Billy comes back the day after, and the bruises are purpling but he doesn’t need Steve, not really, he just seems to want to sit on the sofa and watch cartoons and eat cereal out of Steve’s bowl. He tells Steve that the house gives him the heebie-jeebies, does that thing with his hands, like an _asshole_ , and Steve elbows him in his busted ribs, but he also takes his shoes off at the door, and is weirdly careful with the furniture, uses a coaster because he doesn’t want to leave a _ring_ on the table, Harrington, does he even know how expensive that must have been, so. There’s that.

(Because) when Billy falls asleep this time, mid-afternoon, stretched lazy long across the sofa, feet in Steve’s lap like he’d maybe been trying to annoy him at first and then had just forgotten that it might be _weird_ to leave them there, Steve doesn’t notice, because he’s already asleep.

(Because) Billy comes back the day after that, too, and even though the split across his nose is knitting back together, he’s got a Barbie bandaid over it, and when Steve starts ribbing him, he seems more offended by the fact that Max went out and _bought_ them, that it was a dig she was willing to waste her hard-earned allowance on, than that his face is now punctuated by a bright-pink-banana-yellow strip of floral print. Steve laughs till he thinks he’s going to be sick, and absolutely does not want to kiss Billy Hargrove.

(Because) that night he dreams about Billy, and it leaves him with the feeling of someone speaking into his neck, so he can feel the words but can’t make sense of them, the hot breath, stomach-clenched, unbearable tickling closeness of it. Which is dumb, and unspeakable, and almost more embarrassing than the fact he wakes up hard.

(Because) Billy’s back the next day, and it’s the last day of December, and they’re drinking sprawled out in grass so cold it snaps under them. Billy’s on his back, watching the sky, and Steve’s on his stomach, watching Billy — the weird seashell delicacy of his ear, the dangling earring falling vertical, caught in his hair, the curve of his throat. He feels real brittle, and soft, both somehow and all at once.

“Time’s it?” Billy asks, to the stars.

Steve lifts his head, checks his watch.

“Almost midnight,” he says. “Say goodbye to nineteen-eighty-fucking-five.”

And Billy rolls onto his side, looks at him, says, “Wanna be my New Year’s kiss?” with the clearest eyes Steve’s ever seen, and he can see the choice in front of him, the Steve that says, _don’t see anyone else lining up_ , and laughs it off like he’s too drunk to follow through, or the Steve that says _yes_ , says it right into Billy’s mouth.

Hesitates, just for a second.

Billy looks so fucking _awake_.

And Steve kisses him, eyes wide open.

It’s Wednesday, the first day of January, ’86, and they’ve survived the year, mostly, somehow, almost, maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> come howl with me over these useless kids or small late night kindnesses, in the comments, on my tumblr ([oephelia](%E2%80%9Doephelia.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) or [oepheliawrites](%E2%80%9Doepheliawrites.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)), into the sky in the hopes i'll hear you, whatever yr heart desires.
> 
> thanks to billy for absolutely, definitely watching awful soaps on lonely afternoons, to [kim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimmon/pseuds/Kimmon) for being uplifting, always, and to the romantics for the title !
> 
> ([moodboard](https://oepheliawrites.tumblr.com/post/185796866311/moodboard-for-my-fic-i-hear-the-secrets-that-you))


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